Courts cannot act as superguardian to adults making their decisions: SC

NEW DELHI: An adult has an unqualified right to assert his or her choice and freedom and courts cannot assume the role of “super guardians,” the Supreme Court said on Friday refusing a mother’s plea seeking custody or her daughter who is a major and resides with her father in Kuwait.

“Attainment of majority in an individual’s life has its own significance. One is entitled to make a choice. Courts cannot, as long as the choice remains, assume the role of parents. She is entitled to enjoy her freedom as the law permits her. Courts should not assume the role of a super-guardian or move with any kind of sentiment of the mother,” a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra ordered after the 20-yearold girl submitted before the court that she was keen to stay with her father and pursue her career in Kuwait.

The order was on a petition filed by a woman who wanted contempt action against her husband because he violated a court’s earlier orders — 2011 and 2013 — that gave interim custody of the couple’s two kids, including the now major woman, to her.

The interim arrangement was to be followed until the guardianship court in Kerala decided the couple’s case. However, by the time the trial court gave its order, the daughter had turned major.

When the SC took up the mother’s petition on September 1, 2017, it was informed about the girl turning an adult. The court then sought her personal presence. Appearing before the bench, the girl said she was pursuing her graduation from IGNOU, but she was doing her internship in Kuwait and would prefer to live there. “For me my studies and future is more important,” she told the judges.

The same bench had, in November last year, refused parental custody of a 25-year-old Hindu woman who embraced Islam and married a Muslim man.

It sent her back to the medical college to complete her course in homeopathy after she desired to do so.